William Redington Hewlett,
co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company and an alumnus whose
generosity and vision helped build Stanford into one of the world's
preeminent research universities and the Silicon Valley into a
global model of innovation, died in his sleep Friday morning at his
Palo Alto home. He was 87.

A
memorial service, open to the public, is scheduled for Saturday,
Jan. 20, at 2 p.m. in Memorial Church. A reception will follow at
Burnham Pavilion. The service also will be broadcast live on the
Stanford Channel.

Those planning to attend the
service are advised to allow ample time, as demand for parking may
be high. Shuttle service will be provided from parking lots on
Museum Way, Roth Way and Lasuen Street to the top of the Oval,
where parking will be reserved primarily for the elderly and
disabled. After the memorial service, some shuttles will return to
the parking areas while others will take guests to the reception at
Burnham Pavilion. Shuttles will run continuously from the Pavilion
to the parking areas.

"Stanford has lost one of
its most loyal supporters as well as a trusted friend and adviser,"
President John Hennessy said. "While Bill was extraordinarily
generous to Stanford, he also was a quiet instigator and adviser,
always urging the university to strive to be the best it could be.
We have benefited greatly from his ceaseless desire to inspire
excellence."

David Packard and
William Hewlett outside the legendary Palo Alto garage where they
founded their original company. The garage is a California state
historical landmark.Courtesy
Hewlett-Packard Co.

James Gibbons, the Reid
Weaver Dennis Professor of Electrical Engineering, called Hewlett
"a true spirit for innovation and technology in a firm that has to
be regarded as the corporate birthplace of the Silicon
Valley."

Hewlett was born on May 20,
1913, in Ann Arbor, Mich. He moved to California at age 3 when his
father, a doctor, joined the faculty at Stanford Medical School. In
1930, Hewlett, who had shown a keen interest in science during his
youth, enrolled at Stanford. Here he met his future business
partner, David Packard, who died in 1996 at age 83. While Hewlett
is perhaps best remembered for his scientific expertise and Packard
for his business acumen, these lifelong friends often stepped into
each other's professional shoes.

Hewlett graduated from
Stanford in 1934 with a bachelor's degree and, in 1936, earned a
master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
then returned to Stanford, where he earned a degree of engineer, in
electrical engineering, in 1939. That same year, he married Flora
Lamson, a biochemist.

Packard and Hewlett
during the early years of their collaboration.Courtesy Hewlett-Packard Co.

While graduate students at
Stanford, Hewlett and Packard were encouraged to follow their dream
of starting an electronics company -- amidst the Great Depression
-- by their mentor, former Dean and Provost Frederick E. Terman, a
pioneer in radio engineering. On Jan. 1, 1939, they founded the
Hewlett-Packard Co. in Packard's Palo Alto garage with $538 of
their own money.

The
graduate thesis Hewlett wrote while at Stanford became the basis
for HP's first product. "His first major contribution was a
resistance-tuned audio oscillator with stabilization feedback,"
Gibbons said. One of the first customers for the oscillator was
Walt Disney Studios, which used it to develop the state-of-the-art
soundtrack for the movie Fantasia.

HP's
corporate culture encouraged professional development in sometimes
unconventional ways. "The company would encourage employees to do
even personal projects using company equipment and parts, like
building an amplifier that you needed for your audio system,"
Gibbons said. "It encouraged engineers to be innovative. It was a
generous impulse, but one that has inherent value for the company
because the engineer would learn something."

When
the business expanded to include satellites outside Palo Alto,
Hewlett visited a Santa Rosa site and noticed a storeroom chained
with a padlock. "He immediately went to the store, bought a bolt
cutter, used it to cut the lock and put up a note reading: 'Please
don't chain this again. -- Bill,'" recalled Gibbons. "He wanted
people to be able to invent anytime and under any
circumstances."

Both
Hewlett and Packard shared a disdain for formality and hierarchy
and an admiration for creativity and initiative that they
incorporated into company policies that later defined many
attributes of the Silicon Valley. Many companies worldwide have
adopted the people-oriented approach to management, now known as
the "HP Way," which has included profit sharing for all employees
since the company's inception.

From
its birth until 1968, the company focused on broadly applicable
technologies. The oscillator and HP's other equipment and
measurement devices provided a means for engineers at other
companies, such as Motorola, to create their own devices, Gibbons
said.

After HP introduced a
desktop scientific calculator in 1968, Hewlett asked HP engineers
to design a calculator small enough to fit into a shirt pocket. HP
introduced the HP-35, the world's first handheld scientific
calculator, in 1972, rendering slide rules obsolete. That product
"opened the door," Gibbons said, "for all the technology that
allowed them to be in the computing and peripherals
business."

Early on, Hewlett saw HP as
a global company. In 1959, the firm opened its first manufacturing
site outside of Palo Alto in Boeblingen, Germany, followed shortly
by the establishment of its European headquarters in Geneva,
Switzerland.

Hewlett's gift for
understanding how technologies could become marketplace successes
enabled him to grow the original HP company, which he used to say
made "anything to bring in a nickel," into two international
enterprises -- the Hewlett-Packard Co., with more than 88,000
employees and fiscal year 2000 revenues of $49 billion, and Agilent
Technologies Inc., with more than 47,000 employees and fiscal year
2000 revenues of $11 billion.

Engineering innovation
through philanthropy

Hewlett helped to make
Stanford what it is today through his generous support. Over the
years he and Packard donated more than $300 million to their alma
mater.

"This was equivalent to the
financial contributions the Stanfords themselves had made, adjusted
for inflation," Gibbons said. "Hewlett gave in ways to get things
kicked off fast. Packard gave in ways to complete projects and
ensure the value we were getting."

Said
Hennessy: "Bill Hewlett represented so much to Stanford and the
people of our community. He and David Packard have an almost mythic
role in the founding of Silicon Valley. For Stanford, he was an
alumnus, friend and one of our most generous supporters over a very
long period of time.

"We
feel so fortunate to have had such a strong and meaningful
relationship with him. We know that his influence and inspiration
will live on in the many Stanford faculty and students who will
contribute to their communities in the same way Bill
did."

Hewlett and Packard also
helped to shape the university through their ideas. John Ford, vice
president of development, said that Hewlett and Packard "not only
shared their wealth; they shared their wisdom in running
Stanford."

Indeed, Hewlett served as a
trustee of the university between 1963 and 1974. He also served on
the board of governors of the Palo Alto-Stanford Hospital Center
(now the Stanford Medical Center).

"Bill and Dave gave gifts
that touched all seven schools, the Hoover Institution and the
Athletics Department," Ford said. "Their gifts -- in part or in
whole -- probably fund more than 100 faculty members and hundreds
of students on this campus every year who are receiving fellowships
and scholarships."

In
1994, each contributed $12.5 million for the establishment of a
fellowship in honor of Terman. Later that year, they contributed
$77.4 million for the completion of the Science and Engineering
Quadrangle.

Hewlett was particularly
interested in helping young people flourish and provided funds for
both young faculty development and for student scholarships and
fellowships.

"Bill represents the best
of what philanthropy is," Hennessy said. "He never sought the
limelight for his tireless contributions to the public good. His
generosity was based on the belief that those who have had the good
fortune to succeed should devote themselves to the betterment of
society. Bill's generosity and his thoughtful approach to giving
back have helped inspire a new generation of philanthropists in
Silicon Valley."

Career path of a
technological trailblazer

Hewlett actively managed
the company he and Packard built, except during World War II, when
he served in the U.S. Army as a Signal Corps officer. When he
returned to HP in 1947, he was named vice president. He was elected
executive vice president in 1957 (the year HP made its initial
stock offering to the public), president in 1964 and chief
executive officer in 1969.

He
resigned as president in 1977 and retired as chief executive
officer in 1978. He then served as chair of HP's executive
committee until 1983, when he became vice chair of the HP board of
directors. In 1987, he was named director emeritus.

During his career, Packard
also served as a director of Chrysler Corp., Chase Manhattan Bank,
FMC Corp., the Overseas Development Council and Kaiser Foundation
Hospital & Health Plan.

In
the 1960s, he was a member of President Lyndon Johnson's General
Advisory Committee on Foreign Assistance Programs and the
President's Science Advisory Committee.

Hewlett wrote several
technical articles for electrical engineering publications, held
numerous patents and was the recipient of 12 honorary degrees from
colleges and universities. He was a member of the National Academy
of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, which gave him
its Founders' Award in 1993. In addition, he was a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a life fellow of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an honorary
lifetime member of the Instrument Society of America and co-founder
of the American Electronics Association. In 1985, President Ronald
Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Science, the nation's
highest scientific honor.

In
1966, the Hewlett family established the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation to direct the family's philanthropic interests in areas
that include conflict resolution, environmental conservation,
U.S.-Latin American relations and the performing arts.

In
1994, Hewlett also donated $70 million to endow the Public Policy
Institute of California, a nonprofit research organization aimed at
improving public policy in the state.

At
the time of his death, Hewlett was a director of the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute, which Packard founded.

An
avid outdoorsman, Hewlett enjoyed skiing, mountain climbing,
hunting and fishing. In later life he studied botany, photography
and history.

Hewlett is survived by his
wife, Rosemary Bradford, whom he married in 1978. (Flora Hewlett
died in 1977). He is also survived by five children -- Eleanor
Hewlett Gimon, Walter B. Hewlett, William A. Hewlett, James S.
Hewlett and Mary Hewlett Jaffe -- and five stepchildren -- David C.
Bradford, Robert A. Bradford, Peter K. Bradford, Jeffrey M.
Bradford and Deborah Bradford Whelan.

In
lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the
giver's charity of choice.